Blazing Sevens will try to regain form in Wood Memorial

Blazing Sevens, who finished eighth in the Grade 2 Fountain of Youth at Gulfstream Park on March 4, will look to rebound and potentially earn a spot in the Kentucky Derby by running in the Grade 2, $750,000 Wood Memorial at Aqueduct on April 8, trainer Chad Brown confirmed Wednesday.

Brown said Blazing Sevens is tentatively scheduled to van from Payson Park in Florida to New York on Sunday following a workout over the weekend.

Brown believes Blazing Sevens simply didn’t handle the Gulfstream surface when he made his 3-year-old debut in the Fountain of Youth. Aqueduct is where Blazing Sevens won last fall’s Grade 1 Champagne Stakes.

“I should have run him in the Gotham in hindsight,” Brown said. “I didn’t want to ship him up there and leave him there.”

While Brown has had success on the Triple Crown trail with 3-year-olds who wintered in New York – Cloud Computing and Early Voting both won the Preakness – he noted those horses were based in New York all winter whereas Blazing Sevens was “thriving” at Payson Park following his fourth-place finish in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile

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“He really matured and filled out and was doing super, and I had planned on running in the Wood either way after the Fountain of Youth,” Brown said. “I wanted to train him for the Wood at Payson, that’s why I didn’t run in the Gotham. It proved to be a huge error. He didn’t handle the track early on in the race; draw a line through it. He’s got one more shot here to earn his way in to the Derby field.”

Based on his Champagne win and fourth-place finish in the BC Juvenile Juvenile, Blazing Sevens has 16 qualifying points toward the Kentucky Derby. The Wood offers points to its top five finishers on a 100-40-30-20-10 basis.

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